Saturday, November 08, 2008

I Love This Man!

"Manny was well loved, and then he'd have his little fits, and then we'd patch things up and we'd win a world championship," said Lee. "This year, I think Boston just kind of got fed up with winning. That's too bad."

....

"We could have been world champions again," roared Lee. "And then he wouldn't have hit those 6-irons into the wind against the Cubs; he would have hit them against Tampa Bay. And we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. A prophet in his own time is not well received in this town. I was, for nine years and 142 days. And I told everybody on [sports radio station WEEI] and everything that they would not win it without Manny Ramirez. They told me to shut up. I told them, 'You guys don't like to win, do you?'

"He's the greatest hitter I ever saw. I loved the guy. He's a prima donna, and he pushed down the traveling secretary. Well, you pick the traveling secretary up, and you dust him off, and you apologize and you go back to work. He's the greatest I ever saw. I like Jason Bay. I'm not saying anything disparaging against Canadians, because I've married two of them."

....

"He always took August off," said Lee. "In France, they give you a month vacation and give you two hours for lunch."

...

"Sign Manny Ramirez," Lee said. "We just had that conversation. He's already saved L.A. Sure, they should patch it up with Manny. You're going to have to see his number on the wall sooner or later here, aren't you? He's going to be standing right where I'm standing. Mark my words. Because if he doesn't go in the Red Sox Hall of Fame, [it's not right]."

I've left out the parts where the reporter throws in his opinions. I love how Lee specifically shoved it in the face of WEEI, whose sexist and racist hosts continue to try to brainwash people about Manny. It's so obvious--players who don't give the media exactly what they want are blackballed and then are portrayed as evil when in reality all the fans love them. I'm staying confident in my assertion that there are a whole lot of people still love Manny. It really pisses me off to hear what they say about him on the radio, but I have faith they do not represent us. Hey, they never do.

Unbelievable

I've mentioned before how I have a lot of ideas that just swirl around my head and go nowhere, only to have someone else go through with a similar idea, be a great success, and shatter my dreams. Recently, I had the idea of asking readers if they'd help me buy a minor league baseball team. Everyone could put in 10 bucks or something. I thought of it that way, or the other option of having fewer people but greater contributions. If I could just get 100 rich people to pitch in 10 grand each, we could really have something. And we'd all get to decide on the team colors and name and all that fun stuff. I'd be president, the biggest contributor would be CEO, and right down the line to the smallest contributors being traveling secretaries. I even got excited when I found out about the site we were using to raise money for a commenter's wife's chemo bills--it allowed people to donate money to a cause, and if the goal isn't reached, no one has to pay.

Tonight, I finish watching Real Time with Bill Maher, and I flip on the inty before bed. And what do I see on the FRONT PAGE of the New York Times site as the LEAD STORY? A bunch of people who bought a soccer team, each paying 60 bucks and getting to vote on team decisions, and the internet mastermind who started it all. This has to be a joke on me, right? I've always kind of thought, since I was little, that I was some experiment where everyone's watching me and messing with me--and even THAT idea was done before I could use it, with The Truman Show and that other similar movie....

The good news: 1. The soccer idea clearly started before I came up with mine, so if I'd actually put it out there, someone would've told me, Hey, this is already being done. 2. Always a good sign when one of your ideas is proven to work.

I guess we could still do it. So...does anyone....wanna...buy..... oh forget it, I'd just feel like all those pathetic people who tried to make a million bucks AFTER the first guy did it, by having a million people spend 1 dollar each for an ad on a website. Nope, too late. Idea taken.

Friday, November 07, 2008

Kwiz Numero Tres

Gala-tor

With all my talk of Gedman, who was more of a cult hero, my true favorite (offensive) player of the (late) 80s kind of gets lost in the shuffle. That's Mike "Gator" Greenwell. Tonight, Mike goes into the Red Sox Hall of Fame. Congratulations, Gator.

(Of course, two of my other faves, Bill Lee and family friend Mo Vaughn, are also getting inducted tonight. I'll be reviewing the new Lee documentary, High & Outside, very soon.)

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Know What's Weird?

When I lived in NYC, my apartment was on the street as Obama's apartment when he lived there. About 500 away. When I lived in Somerville, MA, my apartment was on an adjacent street to Obama's when he lived there, about 1500 feet away.

Also, my Somerville place was 3.3 miles from Fenway Park, and my Manhattan place was 3.3 miles from Yankee Stadium. Did I mention this before?

After writing that, I wondered what was 3.3 miles from where I lived the first 25 years of my life in Connecticut. I thought, Well, the only landmark anywhere near us was the Danbury Fair Mall. So I checked it out: 3.3 miles.

Louisville Baseball Park

The Louisville Grays were a charter member of the National League, and played at the Louisville Baseball Park in 1876 and 1877, their only two years in existence. The team was involved in baseball's first gambling scandal. Their ballpark burned down a few years later, and the site became a posh neighborhood called St. James Court. They have an annual art show there, and this page tells about the history of the neighborhood, though it doesn't mention the ballpark.

I don't know how it was situated. But my guess is based on the fact that this page shows a picture of the building at the northwest corner of 3rd and Hill--so I figure it's on that block as opposed to the west side of St. James Court, or further north along that road. I put right field in that spot as opposed to home plate, as that would make for a tough sun. There is a plaque visible on Steet Views at the north end of St. James--I'd love to see what that says. Maybe home plate was actually up there. I thought maybe the park was in what they call "Central Park," but I have read that that park was already there, and the land south of it was all park-land, too, so the ballpark was in that southern section.

Next up: either Providence or something else. Maybe even another Louisville park.

New Stuff For '09

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

TV Party

I check we move to canada at least daily, and last night I noticed Laura was (kinda) live-blogging the election. Laura, being Allan's partner, is naturally part of the Joy of Sox community, which is where I go for game threads most nights of the baseball season (join us in '09!). So I started noticing other JoS-ers on there. It was like a political game-thread. (I finally left only because they were giving results a little ahead of the TV channel Kim and I were watching....just like in baseball gamthreads when one person's TV or radio or internet is ahead, and plays are given away before you see them at home! I thought that was pretty funny--and I did get to chat with them a little before signing off.)

Good Job, USA

When I was little, all the things we learned about U.S. History seemed so far away. The last thing I thought George Washington was was an actual man, even though they told us he used to ride his horse around the Connecticut streets I grew up riding my bike on.

As I got older, it started hitting me like one-ton brick packages that this stuff, compared to, say, all of recorded history, wasn't so long ago, and involved real people just like me. The mass slaughter of Native Americans, the Civil War battles fought on our soil, covered by the New York Times as current events, women's suffrage, and, in my parents' lifetime, black people being thought of as less than human, forced to use their own bathrooms and water fountains, and not allowed to vote.

Today, we elected a black man president. Think about all those protest songs you know. All those Public Enemy albums. All those radicals who raised a fist in the face of the old, white, guard. Didn't it almost seem like a pipe dream? Like, "Yeah, we want black and white to come together, to be equal, of course--but the crusty white guys in charge will never actually let it happen...." Well, now a young, black, guy is in charge. It's almost like we skipped some steps and shot right for the mountaintop.

This is one of the most important days in this country's history. It may take a while for policies to change, for us to get out of Iraq, for health care to become universal, for the economy to be fixed... but race relations just got an immediate boost, and that might just be the most important thing.

Barack Obama, President of the United States. I'm proud to be here to see it.

I'm An Armchair Political Analyst, But...

O Me-o O My-O

Look who missed Ohio....

With Barack winning the round on the sides and high in the middle state, it would appear he's got it wrapped up--McCain will get the giant middle patch, and Obama will get the west coast and Hawaii, and that alone would be enough to win it for the Democrat. And cover the spread.

Early Results

I was curious as to what a young* me wrote in November '04 on this blog. Turns out I just said the election was BS, and linked to Joy of Sox' coverage. He was still doing political posts back then.

I still say both puppets are being held by the same guy--but that doesn't mean I'm not rooting as hard as I can for Obama. Step one to turning this place around is getting a non-Republican in the White House. The fact that it actually would be a black dude would be incredible. Even if you're a right-winger, you gotta admit how cool it would be to know that all the hateful neo-Nazi, Klan-types in this country have a black man as their leader.

But you never know with these elections. Hopefully nobody screws with it to the point where McCain actually wins. More updates later....

Me On Air Right Now

5:00, i.e. right now, I'm on an internet TV show. It's audio only, but with slides, and it doesn't work for Macs, so I can't see/hear it myself, BUT, anyone will be able to watch the podcast later. I'll link to that when it's up.

Regular Temperature Lanta

Planning a trip to Atlanta to see the Red Sox play in late June 2009? Register here for your chance to buy tickets.

I might actually attempt that trip this season--Baltimore, DC, Atlanta in a row. We'll see. Nothing like the above opportunity on the Nationals' site yet, but I think they'll do one since it's our first trip to their park.

SNL 11/1/08

Saturday Night Live was my church. While all the other families were worshipping their respective gods, my family sat around the TV Sunday mornings watching the comic stylings of Terry Sweeney, A. Whitney Brown, and Gary Kroeger, to name a few non-famous players. I would tape the show, switching over to Headbanger's Ball on commercial breaks, and then watch it again with the rest of the family over donuts the next morning.

Obviously, the show has had down-periods, but I've always stuck with it if no no other reason than the fact that I'm always up late, and I'd almost rather watch a bad live show than a good taped one.

I don't watch "religiously" any more, but I've always wanted to see a taping in person. It's not as easy to get into as the nightly shows. You might remember my posts about Colbert, Conan, Dave, and The Daily Show. For those, you ask for tickets, and they give you some. For SNL, you have to send in an e-mail in the month of August. If they choose you at random, you get tickets to a live taping, or a dress rehearsal, which they do a few hours beforehand. Usually I think of this around the first week of September. This year, I remembered in time, told a bunch of people to send e-mails, and my lucky mom won. Of course, part of her "prize" was that I would be her companion. We got a dress rehearsal--last show before the election. We were psyched.

Took the train in. Got to 30 Rock in time to be pretty far up on the line. We knew McCain would be on, but we thought maybe he'd have a stand-in for our dress rehearsal. Nope. Secret service was there, ready to work security on top of the regular NBC guards. When we got up to the ninth floor after the detection of metal, we stood on a new line. We were right by the women's room, and got to watch as each woman coming out had her bag re-searched by a "uniformed division" member of secret service, since the bathrooms were "out of their territory." Uniformed division? Might as well call them the "un-secret" division. The guy was missing women left and right, as none of them were expecting it. Funny thing is, even a secret service person, as long as he's all alone and completely outnumbered, is treated like a rent-a-cop. "Hey, asshole, you missed another one!"

No, I didn't ask the secret service guy for an application, nor did I tell him my name was Henry Krinkle of Hopper Ave. You know, like a rabbit? Hip....hop...

So we get into the studio, are about to be seated in the last row on backless cushions against the back wall, and my mom tells the page she needs a chairback. He puts us down in the front row. Sweet! Same deal as any show, you've got cameras and sets all over blocking sight lines, so there are advantages to being in the front and back, but I liked our spot. Cast member Jason Sudeikis came out and said hi and warmed us up. Then he turned it over to Fred Armisen and Kristen Wiig. They didn't say anything--just broke into Blondie's "One Way or Another," with Fred on guitar backed by the SNL band, and Kristen doing a spot-on Debbie Harry. (Just the voice, she wasn't dressed as Blondie or anything.)

Then 80-something year old Don Pardo spoke for a while. I read that he still flies in from Arizona every week to do the announcing.

It was a little surreal to be in the studio, seeing the permanent sets right in front of me. When I say "front row," I mean the balcony--but that's where the bulk of the audience is. You see the floor seats during the monologue on TV, but there are very few of those. I think those are "special" people. But we were only maybe 50 feet from the front edge of the "stage," though that's only used for the house band, and then, to the left, the musical guests. The skits are done on the floor, configured every way possible. Sets are moved around quickly between segments, and the stars are whisked in and out of their spots. Ben Affleck was the host, and he almost couldn't keep up with the woman in charge of speeding him through the moving sets.

It was a pretty good show. I'm an Olbermann fan, but I thought Affleck's version of him was hilarious. McCain was okay, but a little stiff, which makes no sense, since he's always talking in front of people. I saw the final product, and it was cool to see what got left out and which jokes were cut from Weekend Update, and to see some mess-ups, like Affleck losing his gold tooth mid-sketch and telling us so. Did you see the High School Musical parody with adult students at night school? Affleck's character was in a wheelchair during dress rehearsal. They decided against it for the live show. He also did a James Carville impersonation that I think was completely cut. They seemed to speed everything up during the live broadcast, almost as if they purposely had extra things in each sketch in dress, ready to make cuts and fit it all into 1.5 hours.

I didn't take pics--not allowed. So that's it. Next August, don't forget to send your e-mail.

Monday, November 03, 2008

Lee News

1. I got an advance copy of the new(est) Bill Lee documentary--I'll be watching that very soon and posting a review here.

2. Red Sox' spring home to stay in Lee County, FL, for the next 30 years. The new park, set to open in 2012, is supposed to be modeled after Fenway. I'm not a fan--every park's modeled after Fenway, I say do something different. You want the spirit of Fenway in your park, not a re-creation.

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Dickie Thon (Now With Video)

Update: Kara got third. Here's some video of runners going by from the window:

And here's another vid we shot with Chan's "better" camera, right at noon:

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Stayed at Chan's last night after the SNL taping, and it just so happens today is the NYC Marathon. Chan's window is few feet away from the route, so we just went out and watched the women's leaders run by. We were totally rooting for this Kara person, and when they went by, she was in second, but she's dropped back now. It's so funny, watching these people on TV, then going outside, watching them go right by, and then going back inside because it's too cold, and continuing to watch them work as you relax in a nice chair.